February 10, 2025

I woke up in the dark to the sound of my landlady banging at the door. She wasn’t supposed to be home for another couple of months. I heard her shouting from the outside of the room that my study permit had expired and that my student status was no longer valid.

I was confused. I hadn’t been a student for years.

“You have to go home now.” She continued, “You’ve not being productive here anymore.” Moving past the false premise of my legal status, I asked her when she had arrived home. “What does that matter?” She said, as I had apparently slept through the entire day and it was now 9PM.

I opened the door in a half awake state as she stood there ready to ask for a favour. “You know about Reddit, right?” She asked. I did, and told her it was something like Facebook, while glossing over the ways that they were in fact quite dissimilar. She wanted me to promote something on Reddit at the request of her friend. I asked her what it was and she pulled out a physical copy of The End of Evangelion.

We sat down to watch the film together and found ourselves being literally drawn into the movie as it morphed into live stage production around us. We were able to walk around the set as the action progressed, opening and closing doors on a battleship as missiles hit the water.

We eventually hit the intermission and got up to look behind the scenes, as crews got ready for the latter half of the film. “Fun right?” I asked, while reminding her that there was still more to come after the break.